Gameboy Color - Monster Rancher Battle Card Review

Based on the actual Monster Rancher Battle Card game. This Gameboy colour game is one of the few battle card games out there. Unlike the Monster Rancher games however, the Card game features fewer monsters to balance game play up. The basic idea in this game is to collect all the cards, that's it. Not surprising of course considering this is a Battle card game. I must confess that I love the Battle card idea so my review may come across much more bias than usual.

Gameplay and interface: 8/10

As I mentioned before, the whole idea of the game is to collect all the Battle cards, to do so you have enter ruins or dungeons which only children can enter and fight other Card Breeders, Ruin Guardians and the Ruin Descendent at the bottom of the ruin. While other Card Breeders are clearly visible, Ruin Guardians are not but they only appear around treasure chests which contain dungeon items which are of course helpful items. Each time you enter a ruin you get Dungeon counters which are sort of like lives. Each time you lose a battle your Dungeon counter goes down by one and you will be ejected when it reaches zero and all the items you took in the dungeon will disappear. If you win the battle you'll get some cards and in the case of Guardians they will disappear. All your standard RPG fare of course.

The battles themselves involve you choosing three monsters and then battling another team of three monsters. Each monster has its own special cards not to mention Breeder cards which are your special cards and miscellaneous cards which affect the battle. The total number of these cards should not exceed fifty however which is the deck limit. Of course, you'll have balance your offensive and defensive cards in each deck. In this game, most cards costs guts by the way, which is obtained by discarding cards during the Enguts phase which means you'll have to make some tough choices on which cards to keep or to discard. You'll often be asking yourself "Should I keep this powerful card even though I won't have enough guts next turn to use it or should I discard it to store my guts and hope I'll get another powerful card in the next draw round?" This really changes the game because shoring up powerful cards may cost you the game if you don't have enough guts to use them while the opponent has plenty of cards and guts. Furthermore because there are three monsteres in each team you have the option of the 'losing the battle but winning the war' strategy where you let the enemy expend guts on one of your monsters such as the Golem and then using all the guts you've reserved to demolish the enemy team. All the nuances and possible strategies of the Battle card game itself are a little too lengthy to go into right now but lets just say there is plenty of variety.

You can also go into License Battles to obtain a License to enter harder dungeons and betting battles where you can bet items or cards and then battle hopefully winning the opponent's items or cards instead of losing yours.

The dungeon interface is easy enough, with one button bringing up the map while the other bringing up the options and the other used for opening chests and talking to people. The same goes for the options interface. All the options are fairly obvious and you can easily look at all your cards, swap cards, team boxes or do whatever you like.

As for the actual battle interface I have to admit that for a card game, the game handles the card fighting sessions pretty well. Obviously being a turn based card game RPG this is a real slow game. Fortunately, there is no lag when it comes to the computer's turn and you can increase the text scrolling speed to the highest so you can read all the messages. Finally, as a bonus, there are actual battle animations of the monsters attacking or using their skills. While this option is cool, it does become a little distracting and I turned them off after a while because it was a boring watching the same animations over and over again.

Perhaps the only problems are the repetitiveness of the game. There are of course a few quests to complete but for most part you'll be dungeon-crawling trying to gain cards and items. This of course will probably not appeal to everyone.

Storyline: 2.5/5

The actual storyline is nothing special. Basically you've grown up and are now eligible for card battles in Ruins and so you head for the Battle card arena and get your starter pack.

Graphics: 5/5

The graphics in this game are top-notch for the battle cards even though they are just a little grainy sometimes. As for the actual RPG graphics. Well, its smooth and the areas are fairly interesting but ulitimately not as cool as the battle card artwork. Of course this is the Gameboy colour so we can't expect super detail.

Level design: 2.5/5

The levels themselves are fairly average. Each level of the dungeon has several connecting rooms and you have to find the staircase to go down to the lowest level. No puzzles to solve although there are inaccessible areas which you can later access with the right tools or items.

Music and Sound: 4/5

The music and sound are fairly good considering this is a Gameboy Colour game. The music is appropriately creepy in the spooky areas and holy-sounding in the towns.

For: Good interface, ability to collect all cards, fairly balanced gameplay, monster battle animations

Against: A bit too repetitive, mediocre storyline, may not appeal to everyone, monster battle animations may get repetitive

Be sure to check out Tecmo's site which has a complete free guide to the game. This guide includes descriptions of all the items as well passwords.